Successes, fiascos, 2011 has seen a fistful

Kerry Stokes
shuffled his media assets.
Rupert Murdoch
’s corporate reputation was trashed by the phone hacking scandal at his British newspaper arm. Austereo Group vanished into
Southern Cross Media
. Foxtel moved closer to achieving its dream of swallowing Austar United Communications. Yes, it was quite a year in the media and marketing sectors.

Media man of the year: The constant speculation about when he will retire and who will take his place now
James Warburton
is heading to Ten Network did not stop
Seven West Media
chief executive
David Leckie
from dominating the television industry, again.

When the TV ratings year ended on November 26, Seven had ranked No.1 every week of the year in terms of its share of all free-to-air TV viewers and in key age groups such as 25 to 54 and 16 to 39.

No network has achieved a clean sweep since the TV industry’s current audience measurement system was introduced in 1991. The combined night-time audience of the main Seven channel and its digital channels 7Two and 7mate soared 11 per cent.

“Our [audience] growth was amazing," said Leckie, who ran Nine Network from 1990 to 2002 and joined Seven in 2003.

“And winning every week in all people [total number of viewers] and in every demographic was extraordinary. It was all down to
Tim Worner
[Seven’s director of programming and production] and his team. No one’s ever done it before. We never did it at Nine."

Marketer of the year: He upset the advertising industry by hiring an American company to create ads for
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
, then copped a flood of criticism for introducing the very different “Determined to be different" ad campaign.

Now
Mark Buckman
is overhauling the marketing of one of Australia’s biggest brands,
Telstra
.

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Since he arrived as chief marketing officer in April, Buckman has played a key role in centralising Telstra’s marketing departments, hiring new senior marketers, rejigging its ad agency roster, and creating a more consistent tone and look to the telco giant’s advertising.

The brightly coloured, upbeat ad campaign launched in September has started to produce results, as Telstra has seen an increase in the number of consumers who will consider buying its products and services. The campaign also prompted one Telstra customer to write to chief executive
David Thodey
, praising the campaign as the best she had ever seen.

Media fiasco of the year: Proving, yet again, that politics and the media industry can be an ugly combination, the Gillard government punished Australian News Channel, the operator of the pay television news channel Sky News, by scrapping the tender to run the Australia Network overseas news service and handing a lucrative new contract to the ABC.

The ABC and Sky News – which is owned by Nine Entertainment Co, Seven West Media and BSkyB, the British pay TV company controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corp
– bid for the tender early this year.

They were waiting for a decision when the government unexpectedly announced an amended tender. Government officials and Foreign Minister
Kevin Rudd
favoured Sky’s bid, while other ministers baulked at awarding the contract to a business connected to News Corp. While Rudd was overseas earlier this month, the ABC got the nod.

Opposition communications spokesman
Malcolm Turnbull
said the decision to leave the contract with the ABC in perpetuity “reveals in full light the chronic infighting and incompetence of the Gillard government". Sky chief executive
Angelos Frangopoulos
said it expected to be fully compensated for the money spent on the tender.

Marketing mea culpa of the year: For the past two years, retailers have been talking about how
Wesfarmers
’ Coles supermarket division was winning the marketing war with its larger rival,
Woolworths
.

Every big marketing initiative from Coles – such as the “Down, down" ad campaign, the use of celebrity chefs and the “Feed a family for under $10" promotion – was copied by Woolworths. In early November, Woolworths executives publicly confessed they were being outmarketed by Coles.

The new director of supermarkets and petrol at Woolworths,
Tjeerd Jegen
, said the retailer’s recent marketing had been inconsistent, reactive and “lacking in clarity". Woolworths chief executive
Grant O’Brien
said the company needed to “re-establish marketing supremacy around value and growth, and tackle the value perception" of its supermarket chain.

Woolworths started its marketing overhaul in late November, introducing the first TV commercial in a serialised ad campaign called “My family", which is designed to promote the retailer’s role in Australians’ lives.

“The Woolworths brand is a ‘we’ brand," the company’s new general manager of supermarket marketing,
Liz Ryley
, said. “It is about everyday Australian families and their shared experiences."

Mystery of the year: From the moment Australian
Hamish McLennan
announced in February he had quit as chief executive and chairman of WPP Group’s global ad agency Young & Rubicam and would move back to Sydney from New York, speculation about why he had resigned and what he would do next have kept advertising executives entertained.

McLennan, who was once regarded as a potential successor to WPP boss Martin Sorrell, returned to Australia months ago but remains employed by WPP until the end of this month.

Talk that he would lead a WPP buyout of the remains of Photon Group or set up a new digital marketing division for WPP through Asia appears to have simply been idle gossip. McLennan is helping WPP’s agency George Patterson Y&R with its pitch for the Optus ad account but his plans beyond that remain a mystery.